Network Earth 🌐

Establishing Earth's deep-sea fiber optic cable network has cost billions of dollars, with individual projects ranging widely based on scale and complexity.

For example, the Unity trans-Pacific cable, completed in 2010, cost around $300 million for 10,000 kilometers, while the Southern Cross NEXT cable, connecting Australia to the U.S., cost $300 million for 16,148 kilometers.

Larger projects, like Meta's ongoing globe-spanning subsea cable initiative, are projected to exceed $10 billion.

These investments highlight the massive scale and technical challenges of deploying undersea infrastructure to support global internet connectivity.